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Kumara Times, Issue 1080, 17 March 1880, Page 4

THE TAY BRIDGE DISASTER. Farther particulars about the destruction of the Tay Bridge are to hand by the ■ mail . Captain Scott, of Her Majesty’s train-ing-ship Mars stationed a little way . below the site of the bridge has given his v account of the disaster. He says he fully Expected that the bridge would give way ' before the violence of the storm. “ lie never imagined for a moment that any attempt would be made to take a train across.” To send a train across the bridge with a furious storm bearing down upon it was much the same as hoisting a sail on a ship when she ought to betaking in every stitch of canvas. The latticework of the bridge might be compared to the spars and rigging or the vessel, the iron columns which supported the structure being comparable to masts. When the train went on to the bridge the act was equivalent to hoisting sail. So long as the train was on the top of the girders It was itself likely to be blown away, like a sail that is torn to tatters. When it entered the range of the high girders, where the rails were at the foot instead of at the top, it virtually served to close the lattice work, like a species of shutter, and the bridge, as well as the train, must thus have been endangered. Account for it as we may, it was at this juncture that the bridge yielded to the fury of the storm, and the train, together with the structure it travelled upon, went down into the gulf. An ingenious theory has been broached, sanctioned by so high an : authority as Sir Thomas Bouch and other engineers, that one or two of the end

carriages were in the first instance blown off the rails. These vehicles, it is sup-

posed, were dragged along the track and driven against the iron lattice work, thuscausing the comet-like streak of sparks described by some of the spectators. The engineers are said to assert that if the train bad kept the rails no damage would have been done to the bridge, and the catastrophe would have been averted. If so, there was a greater reason for establishing those “ meteorological regulations” which have been suggested as desirable in future. According to the theory it was the train which gave the bridge over to the fury of the storm. But the description given by eye witnesses of the catastrophe is rather that the jet of sparks flew from the front of the train. Where all was dimly seen it cannot be expected that we shall have precise evidence, but on the basis of this theory the engineers will have to explain how it came to pass that the impinging of two or three carriages against one side of the bridge led to such wholesale destruction. Not merely one or two spans gave way, but as many as 13 went before the blast. Not only was the whole range of the elevated girders carried off, but the greater part of the iron columns supporting the superstructure likewise disappeared, some shattered fragments alone remaining on the stone piers which had formed their base. The phenomenon seems best explained on the assumption that the portion of the bridge which stood highest was carried away by the sheer force of the gale, though it seems reasonable to consider the train as contributing in some way to the disaster. Up to the present only 29 bodies have been found, and the belief is gaining ground that the majority were swept out to sea on the night of the accidents. No fewer than seven divers have been employed daily, but the result of the operations has principally been the raising of small peices of wreckage, such as carriage panels, lamps, and fragments of the internal fittings of the carriages. An attempt will shortly be made to raise the girders by means of pontoons, but the engineers are by no means sanguine, that this can be done without using dynamite, and so defeating to some extent the main object in view, which is to obtain from the appearance of the girders themselves some indication as to the manner in which the disaster occurred. In any case, the floating of such a great mass of ironwork will be the work of time and difficulty. The Board of Trade inquiry, so for as the local circumstances are concerned, may be said to have been concluded. The scientific evidence, which will, of course, tje the most important as effecting the science of bridge building generally, is according to present arrangements, to be taken in London. The Court heard the story of the officials who were at or near the bridge. On the evening of the accident one of these observed the wheels ot the train on the east side emitting a shower of sparks for several hundred yards before the great flash of light which accompanied the disappearance of the tail lights of the train. This might be explained by the grinding of the flanges of the wheels against the east rail, owing to the tremendous lateral pressure of the - wind. The flash produced at the moment of the disappearance of the train is supposed by Watt, the foreman surfaceman, to have been caused by the striking of the train against the girders after leaving the rails, but it is known that when the girder fell on the last occasion a similar phenomenon was observed. The smashing of the piers, with their numerous iron columns, would necessarily cause a great deal of friction, and consequently fire. According to the experts, the theory that the train was blown off the rails and knocked down the girders can only be satisfactorily proved or disproved by the appearance of the submerged girders themselves. All the witnesses concerned in testifying to the fury of the gale • whilst, on the other, none came forward’ at least none entitled to speak with authority, who ventured to say that in their opinion it, was an act of imprudence to attempt to run the train over the bridge at the time when the cpllapse took place. Nor is this at all surprising. No intimation had ever been given that the

bridge should not be used in tempestuous weather, and it evidently was not the province of the subordinate officials acting at either end of the bridge, or even in Dundee, to draw conclusions which, after all, could have no other foundation than their own nervousness. A train had crossed the bridge in safety at a few minutes past six the same evening, when the gale was to all appearance as strong as it was an hour later, and nothing was said by those in charge of that train to indicate that their was cause for alarm. It was reasonable to toinfer that what could be done without mishap at six o’clock could be repeated at a quarter-past seven o’clock, and however boisterous the weather may have been, it is only fair to the railway officials employed in the neighborhood of the river to take this circumstance into consideration, In conversation with an eminent engineer who had much to do with the erection of the fated bridge, a correspondent put this question to him “Do you think this accident might have been avoided 1” “Certainly I do,” he answered; “if the train had been going fifty miles an hour, Tay bridge would be standing now. She crept along instead of cutting through, and offered a fair target for the full force of the wind. The train was blown off the line, and it was this that broke the bridge down. The same accident may happen to-morrow to any bridge built on the same system.